Re: cross compiling GTK+ on Linux for Windows

[Tor Lillqvist <tml iki fi>]

> How are the binaries in  http://www.gtk.org/download-windows.html built?

Currently, locally on Windows, using MinGW and MSYS. Look in the
developer zip files for "src/tml/packaging/*.{sh,log} which are the
shell scripts used to build the packages, and the output from those
scripts.

But, I build natively on Windows only because I have a long experience
of doing that, and have acquired the necessary dark skills and hacks
required to make it work relatively smoothly.

For anybody new looking into it, I certainly recommend using
cross-compilation. Have a look at the spec files for the
cross-compiled GTK+ stack (and much more) for Windows in the OpenSUSE
Build Service. See
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/windows:/mingw:/win32/openSUSE_11.0/src/
for the source RPMS, and sibling directories for "noarch" RPMs
containing in fact Windows binaries. My plan is that eventually the
Windows binaries offered from www.gtk.org / ftp.gnome.org will come
from the OpenSUSE Build Service projects.

As you also use an RPM-based distro, the concepts should be familiar
to you. And actually, there is a similar, in fact older, Fedora-based
effort to cross-compile GTK+ and stuff for Windows.

--tml